In Control of Life Chances? Visible Minority Immigrants and Sense of Mastery

A sense of mastery or control is an essential life skill for persons to be able to deal with everyday challenges. Comparing the sense of mastery between immigrants and native-born Canadians using the 2008 General Social Survey (GSS-2008) data set, we seek to understand whether being an immigrant, particularly a visible minority immigrant, predicts lower levels of sense of control over life chances. The findings demonstrate that being born outside of Canada lowered the scores on the mastery scale for both Whites and visible minorities; however, the penalty of being a visible minority and an immigrant was much higher.